Buried in the porkfest that is the new transportation funding bill was $$45m for the magnetic levitation train to nowhere that we posted about back in May.

This is a step in plans to build a $1.3b line from Las Vegas to Primm, NV. You may have never heard of Primm, and you may have no reason to ever go there — but if Sen. Harry Reid (D-NV) and his partners in pork have their way, you’ll be able to not go there very, very fast.

Backers hope that the track will some day be extended along I-15 all the way to Anaheim, at a cost they project to be about $12b. In the real world — not the world of figures used to justify experimental transportation projects combined with large public works projects — it is likely to cost far more. Our earlier post detailed the sad history of cost overruns on virtually every passenger rail system built in this country in the last forty years.

Projects like the maglev also usually use highly optimistic (to be charitable) ridership projections. For instance, LA’s Red Line ended up with 21% of the daily riders that were predicted when the project was being funded. The Las Vegas - Primm - Anaheim maglev folks project they will have 39 million riders in 2015. Hard to see how they’re going to do that when they also project that using the train will cost more than flying and significantly more than driving.

This train is a bad idea if it goes to Primm, and it’s a bad idea if it goes to Anaheim. But we suspect that’s not going to matter.

Technorati Tags: pork spending, maglev, train

This entry was posted on Thursday, August 18th, 2005 at 1:27 pm by A Senior Administration Official and is filed under Your Tax Dollars In Action. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.